


Blindness

by TheGrinningKitten



Series: His Story [5]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Blindness, Depression, Disability, Gen, Gender Confusion, Ink is very hurt and very tired, Mutilation, hints of Error/Ink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:21:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29681793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGrinningKitten/pseuds/TheGrinningKitten
Summary: A note from the translator:"His Story" is actually a series of stories in nature. However, originally, all of its stories were posted as one single fic, but due to AO3's capabilities, the translated stories are separated into actual fics under the same series.The preface by the author (which was originally a separate chapter) is available onthe main page of the "His Story" series.Thank you for your attention and enjoy!
Relationships: Dream & Ink, Error & Ink, Ink & Ink
Series: His Story [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124066
Comments: 28
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Его история (История 5 - Слепота)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/766104) by Elena Troitskaya (Sariko). 



> **A note from the translator:**
> 
> "His Story" is actually a series of stories in nature. However, originally, all of its stories were posted as one single fic, but due to AO3's capabilities, the translated stories are separated into actual fics under the same series.
> 
> The preface by the author (which was originally a separate chapter) is available on [the main page of the "His Story" series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124066).
> 
> Thank you for your attention and enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: torture, mutilation, despair.
> 
> Special thanks to [Neutralcybertrn](https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn) for beta-reading this chapter!

Ink felt like a total weakling. Defeated and mutilated — he was supposed to die along with Dream and Blue, yet somehow he was still alive. He was lying in a puddle of his own blood, broken, blinded and unable to even raise a hand. He was dying to the sound of his enemies’ laughter.

Ink saw his friends die but wasn’t able to feel the pain of losing them: his paint vials got broken just like his soul did once. So he just watched indifferently as they were torn apart. If he had even a shred of magic at his disposal, he would’ve tried to save at least one of them. But now their dust was scattered over the room. They were gone.

It was time for the head guardian to suffer. Nightmare was the one to handle him — which was somewhat surprising. Ink thought he’d become Error’s trophy, since it was the destroyer who secured victory for Nightmare’s gang. But the black skeleton wasn’t around: he stayed behind to finish destroying the world.

Nightmare was beaming with victorious joy. He simply squeezed Ink in his tentacles and listened to him scream as his bones cracked. He kept squeezing tighter and tighter until the screams turned into a wheeze and there was nothing left to break anymore. Then he let the resulting mess of bone shards and inky blood to fall onto the floor. He didn’t stop at that though. The last thing Ink saw was Nightmare summoning a bone and bringing it up to his eye-sockets. Then came another wave of pain — and total darkness.

He realized he was still alive around the same time he heard the voices.

“Why would you even want him?” that was Nightmare’s voice breaking through the haze of pain Ink was in.

“Gonna make a doll out of him,” was Error’s reply.

Ink must’ve lost consciousness at some point, because he couldn’t remember how he ended up in the Anti-Void. He guessed where he was by the total silence around him: there was no rustling of the grass, no howling of the wind — nothing. It was also neither hot nor cold around.

But what did it matter where he was? What’s important was what fate awaited him. Why did Error want him?

Ink had no idea what the destroyer did to him — but when strings wrapped around his body and squeezed, he found himself in immense pain. His bones crunched like twigs and then ached for a while longer afterwards, fixed in place with strings and bandaged.

When asked, “Why?” Error responded with swearing and vague excuses:

“You’ll die when I want.”

“And when will you want it?” the barely alive skeleton asked, his voice quivering.

“When all the worlds are gone.”

Ink could only grit his teeth and hope to die sooner, because each world’s death put his body through a whole lot of pain — something incomparable even to what Nightmare had done to him. Besides, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life as the destroyer’s toy.

But what else could he be now? Ink couldn’t even move his hand. He could barely turn his head, and even speaking didn’t come easy. He couldn’t feel his legs at all. Perhaps, they were missing? He had no way of knowing. His whole body felt like a heavy appendage to his head.

There was no physical torture involved. Error only taunted his defeated enemy, taking pleasure in the other’s inability to keep protecting the worlds. Hurtful words were the only form of torture he allowed to happen though.

However, whenever he left, Ink found himself caught in the agony of yet another universe dying. Upon his return Error would always be surprised to see his toy in the state of a living corpse. He would bring the guardian’s fever down and replace the bandages on the reopened, bleeding wounds. Then he’d swear up a storm and keep promising that all the AUs would soon be destroyed and the guardian’s suffering would come to an end. But he’d better start healing — or else…!

This went on for quite a while. Error would destroy and come back only to find his doll with newly bleeding wounds. Delirious, Ink felt himself being bandaged over and over and over again, and _begged_ for this sophisticated torture to be brought to an end — but Error stubbornly kept this vicious circle going.

In the end, the glitch must’ve gotten tired of dealing with a broken doll, because one day Error took Ink to the artist’s home in the Void, to his house. There he put Ink into his bed and even covered him with a blanket. He must’ve said something, but Ink wasn’t listening. He was too tired of fighting against the darkness that kept dragging him down. He felt as if he was lying in a coffin, and Error’s words hammered the last of the nails in. Then the door shut behind the glitch, and Ink thought he heard the sound of soil raining down on the coffin’s cover.

That was it. Silence. Darkness. Emptiness. Pain.

The pain kept coming back with every world lost and reopened his wounds as if to punish him.

Ink screamed into the darkness: “Please, stop! I can’t protect you! Not anymore! Please, leave me alone! I’m not the guardian anymore! I’m not the guardian anymore!”

He didn’t think anyone would hear him…

The guest didn’t walk into the room. They simply appeared inside it and slowly approached the bed, sitting down beside it.

“Hello, Ink.”

Ink did a full-body shudder and turned his head towards the direction the sound had come from. The voice seemed oddly familiar.

“Who’s there?” Ink wheezed.

“Someone who wants to help.”

“What can you do to help?”

“Everything. But not for free, of course.”

Ink kept listening to the too calm, too smooth timbre of the voice. Tried to figure out where he knew it from.

“What do you want?”

“Everything. But I promise you everything as well.”

“Everything for everything?” the guardian asked, confused.

“Yes. I will do everything, but I will take everything as well. I will become everything you once were. If you agree to this, I promise to take care of your Multiverse, become its new pillar of support.”

Hope fluttered inside his chest. Would someone really be able to stop the destruction of the worlds and rid him of this horrible pain?

“Wait. What do you mean by saying that you’d become me?”

“I’m going to dress like you, carry your name, do what you were doing. I’ll steal everything that made up your life. But most importantly, I’ll take this.” The guest touched Ink’s chest, and the pain nearly threw him into the air: the tattoos burned, as if covered in acid, nearly scorched off his bones. “Thanks to this, I’ll be able to feel the pain for you and come to the worlds that need help in time.”

Whoever this guest was, Ink knew they were an unusual creature. Perhaps, they didn’t even come from his Multiverse. Though he might’ve just imagined the alien aura of the guest, and in reality they were simply created as Ink’s replacement? However, even if they were here not to save the Multiverse but to destroy it — what did he care? Best to get this over with quickly either way.

“I accept.”

Bony palm flattened against his chest, and he felt the final pain of his life… or so he thought.

Death would’ve been a logical conclusion to an existence full of deprivation, but when he came back to consciousness, he once again found himself suffering in the cage of his mutilated body. He felt someone’s bony fingers stroke his blind eye-sockets, felt them replace the bandages on his reopened wounds, and he also heard a song. Whoever it was that replaced him, they had gentle hands and a beautiful, somnolent voice.

“Sleep easy, Ink. Trust in me.”

Ink slept and didn’t know that the guest was confidently putting on his clothes. He slept and had no idea that the guest was arming themself with his paintbrush. He slept and didn’t see the inks obey a new master.

Ink slept and didn’t realize he was finally free from his burdensome duty.

He wasn’t the one who felt the pain and the call.

The guest confidently dived into a puddle of ink.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: mentions of injuries and past deaths.
> 
> Special thanks to [Neutralcybertrn](https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn) for beta-reading this chapter!

Error was destroying a world — slowly and without the drive he used to have, as if giving a potential hero capable of fighting him the time to arrive. Only he knew that the hero wasn’t going to come and the world was doomed, because the only person capable of matching him in a fight could no longer get out of bed.

Error instantly regretted thinking of him. The image of the broken, bleeding monster was instantly in his mind’s eye, and pity for such a sad ending sneaked into the glitch’s soul.

How would Ink live from now on? Could this existence — this thing he got as thanks for all of his efforts — even be called life? Was there anyone who’d take care of him? Stars above, did he even have any friends apart from the now deceased Blue and Dream? Or would he remain lying in the Void all alone?

The black skeleton caught himself considering whether to drop everything and return to the abandoned guardian, and… do something. Finish him off, perhaps, so that he could stop torturing himself with these strange thoughts, or maybe…

Error refused to consider this further, preferring to return to the familiar act of destroying a world. It took a bit of work, but the crumbling code and screams of dying people eventually brought him back to the comfort of familiar chaos.

And that’s when he saw something he couldn’t have hoped to see.

Not far from him, in the middle of a snowy lake, something black spilled out. It twisted upwards in a spiral — and Ink jumped out of it, alive and well.

Joy. That’s what the destroyer felt in that moment. He turned to face his enemy. A manic grin found its way onto his face as he waited for the other to come closer. However, the closer the guardian got, the more happiness escaped Error. Confusion took its place.

The first thing he noticed was the gait. It was different. Ink had never walked like that — not even when injured. And wasn’t he bigger? Also, the artist didn’t have the habit of staying off the paints for long: his eyelights were always switching between shapes — but this skeleton’s eyelights remained plain white. And Ink wore his scarf differently: wrapped it around his neck — but in this case the scarf covered half of this person’s face.

Error was consumed with bitter disappointment. Whoever used that inky portal, it was definitely not the Ink he knew.

“Who are you?!” the black skeleton shouted.

“Ink,” he heard in response.

This voice! It sounded chillingly similar to Ink’s, yet it wasn’t the same. It was different.

Error laughed — hysterically, loudly, with the broken code of his voice going every which way in pitch. Then he howled:

“You’re not Ink!”

“Why?” The impostor seemed genuinely surprised.

“At the very least, because your eyes are white, and the bastard had them—”

“Oh yeah!” The impostor slapped themself in the forehead and reached for the sash with the paints. They took out the yellow vial and took a sip. In an instant, their eyelights turned into the familiar kaleidoscope of symbols. “Better?”

The voice changed too. It became… not empty. Joy rang inside it like bells — the same way it coloured Ink’s voice whenever he drank yellow paint.

Error started shaking.

“You still can’t be him! His injuries were too great!”

“Injuries can be healed.” The impostor smiled.

“Not all of them!”

Now the impostor took a sip of red, and, just like Ink’s, his eyelights changed colour, and his expression was filled with a warrior’s determination.

“You’re right. Not all injuries can be healed. Not all grudges can be forgotten. And there’s a burden one cannot carry on their own. But there are those who are willing to help. It’s a pity you weren’t one of them, Error.”

A chill ran down Error’s spine. Whoever this impostor was, they appeared extremely similar to the guardian, and these similarities in looks and speech instilled a lot more fear in him than Help Sans ever could with his fangs.

The destroyer was the one who started the fight. He’d gotten sick of stewing in his confusion, which promised to send him into a long reboot if he hesitated any longer. He unleashed the full power of his blasters and strings upon the impostor. Never had he ever showed so much strength and nimbleness in a battle — not even in his last confrontation with Ink. He was filled with rage, as if it was he who drank the red paint and not the impostor. He wanted to win and unmask this stranger — prove that this wasn’t Ink.

But whoever this impostor was, they turned out to be faster and stronger than the original. They jumped higher, weaved together trickier ink attacks, hit stronger and had a few tricks up their sleeve.

Ink and Error had been fighting long enough to thoroughly learn each other’s moves. They had no new tricks at their disposal anymore. So this was yet another thing that proved that this wasn’t Ink: the impostor had new attacks — like the inks that imitated Error’s strings and weaved into a net, almost catching the destroyer.

Sooner or later, the tipping point which would define the winner, had to come. And it did — or at least, Error thought it did.

The impostor ended up hanging in his blue strings, and one of them looped around their neck.

“Gotcha!” Error gloated. He instantly sent his strings into the impostor’s chest to pull out their soul and finally prove to himself that he wasn’t looking at Ink.

Only there was no soul to be found.

“Who the hell are you?” the black skeleton hissed, giving up on figuring out just who he was looking at.

“Ink,” was the answer he got. Then the damned impostor turned to ink, easily escaping the clutches of the strings, and soon they were standing on the ground once again, as if nothing had happened.

The only thing that saved Error from a reboot was a hasty retreat into his home Anti-Void.

The impostor didn’t dawdle either: they initiated a reset of the universe and returned to Ink’s house, putting up protection from entry on all of its sides.

Just in time too. Error was already close. He ran into an opaque white wall, checked its code for weaknesses to try and break it down — and found none. So he threw himself against the wall instead, like a bird running into a glass. He did so again and again as he screamed:

“Ink!”

But nobody came. Nobody let him in.

Having exhausted his strength, Error sat down beside the wall, staring at it with a thousand yard stare. Behind it, inside the house, in the second floor bedroom, there could still be the real Ink.

He was still there, right? He was still alive, _right_?

A reboot finally caught up with the destroyer, and he froze for a long time, stunned by everything that had happened.

“I thought I heard Error’s voice.” Ink turned his head towards the window.

“Yes, we got acquainted today,” he heard, coming from the doorway. “Error instantly knew I’m not you.”

“Did he hurt you?” Ink quivered, worried. His blind eyes were searching for the new guardian, but he couldn’t tell where exactly the other was standing. Did the new guardian win? What price did they have to pay for that victory?

“He didn’t.” Ink heard the new guardian move a chair to his bedside and sit down. “I’ve faced guys stronger than him before. So you don’t have to worry. I can handle it.”

“Don’t get too cocky.” Ink frowned. “I too thought that I was strong — and here’s where that got me. I wasn’t even able to protect my friends. And now they… they…”

“I know.” The voice was quiet as a gentle hand stroked him on the head. “I’m sorry about what happened to Blue and Dream. But their deaths aren’t permanent. Blue will come back after his universe resets. If you want, I can go right now and—”

“No!” the former guardian demanded, his voice loud and clear. “No resetting UnderSwap! I promised Blue that should he die, his universe will keep on living without him. And I can’t break that promise.”

“And what about his brother? Won’t he mourn his brother?”

“He will!” Ink clenched his teeth. Young Blue died a horrible death. All beaten up, he was lying on the floor as Dust kept putting more and more pressure on him from above. His ribcage broke apart with a terrifying _crack_ , and his soul rang as it shattered to pieces. Only then was his body left alone to turn to dust. The life of the ever-positive skeleton turned into nothing more but extra numbers to Dust’s LV stats. “Oh, damn it! I need to tell Paps! Damn it! He doesn’t even know why his brother hasn’t been visiting him. He’s waiting there and hoping…”

Ink wanted so badly to cry, but he couldn’t truly feel grief without his paints.

The new guardian knew it: “Should I give you some paints?”

Ink considered it for a moment.

“No. I need to keep a cool head. Any emotion at all will be too strong for me right now.”

The new guardian’s hand stopped stroking him on the head and started examining his mutilated body. Broken bones greatly outnumbered the intact ones — but all of them could be healed with paints. However, Ink needed to build up his strength for that. For now, the only thing holding the bone shards together were the very recognizable blue strings.

The new guardian brought up the subject of the guardians’ deaths again:

“Dream’s death is a terrible tragedy.”

Ink could still remember the death of the guardian of positivity in perfect detail: The horrifying hole in the chest of the beaten-up body. The golden apple in Nightmare’s hands… Ink couldn’t remember what exactly the lord of negativity did to that apple.

“Yes. And I don’t know if there’s a change of bringing him back.”

He heard the new guardian stand up and walk towards the door.

“I’m going to pay Papyrus a visit. You’re right. Someone needs to tell him. I hope it won’t unleash another tragedy upon your Multiverse. And I’ll consider what can be done for Dream while I’m out.”

Error spent a long while sitting by the barrier, slipping into reboots from time to time. FInally, he got sick of it and began picking a new universe to attack. After all, if this impostor called themself Ink and had his powers, then they absolutely had to show up, when he did attack — and then Error could force the answers out of them.

Any AU would have sufficed, but Error couldn’t focus enough to make the decision. He was scared of getting the answers. Scared of putting an end to this prolonged relationship with Ink. Scared of finding out that the artist was gone.

His soul was pulled into a whirlwind of burdensome sadness: the very same feeling that stopped him from finishing off the mutilated skeleton and forced him to take care of the other — to the best of his ability — for a long time. And then, when he realized that his care wasn’t helping Ink get any better, Error simply took him to the artist’s house. He needed a break from this torture, from this relationship…

Too many things had happened. The single reality that had been there for ages was split into patches of various shapes and sizes, and now Error had to sew them together into a new reality — one that would probably look a lot different from the old one.

He looked at DreamTale. It was a dark and gloomy world, stripped of its light — a tombstone of a universe. Nightmare had the last golden apple now, and it wasn’t clear what he was planning to do with it. Error didn’t ask.

“There’s nothing for me to do there,” the destroyer decided and kept searching. He came across UnderSwap, but before Error could step into the world, he was overcome by a feeling of awkwardness. This was the home world of the deceased Blue. Contrary to his expectations, it hadn’t been reset — which meant that the younger guardian was still dead.

Discomfited, Error was about to close the window he’d opened when he noticed Ink — or rather, the impostor. They were walking away from Mount Ebott and towards the town — towards Papyrus’s house.

The older of the Swap brothers had been living a peaceful life in the monster settlement for years now. He had a new family, and he was putting a lot of effort into taking care of it. He rarely saw his brother: Blue preferred to run around the Multiverse, doing a dangerous job. Papyrus felt like a relative of a secret agent ��— like someone was going to bring him a black ribbon sooner or later.

They did.

When Papyrus opened the door and saw only Ink on his doorstep, something shriveled inside of him. He instantly knew he wasn’t going to see his brother again.

“How did it happen?” was the only thing he managed to ask.

The new guardian remained silent, unsure how to relay something so terrible in a delicate way. Or was it better not to say a thing? Sometimes silence spoke louder than words.

But Papyrus was adamant: “I asked you how?!”

“I am deeply sorry, but I have no intention of talking about this.”

The punch landed straight on the nasal bone. The guardian’s head snapped back momentarily. Thick ink ran down from their nose.

“I am deeply sorry,” the guardian repeated calmly, as if they hadn’t had their nose broken just now. “I am deeply sorry.” And again. “I am deeply sorry.”

“Shut up! You can’t be sorry! You’re a soulless scumbag,” Papyrus forced out through pain and tears.

“But I _am_ sorry,” the guardian repeated, reaching towards their paints, but in the end they put their hand down, as if burned, leaving the vials untouched. “Dream is gone as well. I’m all alone now.”

“And safe and sound!” Papyrus was barely holding back from rectifying that. “You bastard! Came sauntering here straight from the battlefield, and Blue… Blue won’t ever come back… not anymore…”

The guardian watched Papyrus choke on his tears for a moment, then added to the shock:

“Not straight from the battlefield. It happened four months ago. Maybe more. I’m not sure.”

The delivery time had Papyrus gasping for air as he tried not to faint. He didn’t know how to react until he heard:

“Not safe and sound either. Sorry, but there was no one who could have delivered you the horrible news sooner.”

Papyrus found it in him to calm down a bit.

“Will you reset the world?”

“No.” The guardian shook their head. “Blue was promised that his world would keep on living even without him. Blue gave his life for a good cause. He helped many people. He never regretted getting involved in such a dangerous fight. He will be missed. But you will have to keep on living.”

Children made their appearance behind the tall skeleton’s back. They stared at the guest at the doorstep, curious, as they wondered why their dad was upset.

Papyrus looked back, saw the kids, took a deep breath, exhaled and walked back inside the house. He slammed the door into the guardian’s face, as if asking the other not to come back.

The guardian lingered by the door for a little longer, then turned into ink and teleported somewhere else.

Error, who’d been eavesdropping on this whole exchange, didn’t know what to think. He lost any desire to destroy AUs — today, at least.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to [Neutralcybertrn](https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn) for beta-reading this chapter!

Nightmare didn’t idle. In the absence of his brother and the rest of the guardians he’d already managed to gain control over a third of the AUs. He expected no resistance, having grown relaxed after a steady stream of easy victories — so he was absolutely unprepared to meet Ink again.

It happened in a Fell-version of a post-apocalyptic world. The world had already been lacking in positivity to begin with, but now it was also slowly turning into a ball of hopelessness and tension under Nightmare’s influence. The locals were barely holding back Nightmare’s gang from taking over the last of the shelters as they argued over what kind of mutans attacked them and what faction were they coming from. Despite the abundance of firearms, the survivors weren’t able to protect the town, where a nuclear missile was kept, from being taken over, and now they could only pray that the weapon wouldn’t be used against them.

Nightmare drank their fear like a fine wine, growing stronger. He was preparing to turn this whole universe into a part of his feeding grounds. After all, what else could the locals do under the acid rains but suffer?

That’s when the guardian struck. They spent a while waiting for just the right moment. In the meantime, they kept hiding in discrete spots in the form of an inky puddle that looked exactly like an oil spill. They waited for the gang members to leave, waited for Nightmare to come close enough — and only did they strike.

Nightmare was pierced through — but not with a bone or Ink’s paintbrush. A long sharp pike grew out of the inky puddle. It pierced the body of the lord of negativity without damaging the bones. Nightmare’s soul, however, ended up trapped within the mysterious black substance that smelled a lot like paint. It pulled itself into Nightmare’s ribcage, mixing in with the liquid hatred that oozed out of his bones.

Nightmare panicked. He felt something squeeze his soul, digging into it at the edges. He tore his own clothes, pulled the black armor off himself to get the black _something_ out with his bare hands. This was a mistake.

“You’ve gone soft, Nightmare.”

Behind him, a silhouette of Ink grew, armed with Broomy. The paintbrush smashed Nightmare right on the head. There was a _crack_ — and Nightmare was forcibly sent off to the land of dreams.

The unconscious body was thrown into a portal.

“Trust me, you’ll probably find this idea fascinating — but you’ll probably learn to be wary of what my imagination is capable of as well. I just need to know what you did with the golden apple. I hope it’s still in one piece.”

When Killer, Dust and Horror came back, they only found a few drops of blood on the spot where their boss should’ve been waiting for them.

Have you ever woken up in a place different from the one you fell asleep in? If you have, you’d probably understand how lost Nightmare felt when he awoke to find himself in the middle of a forest. It was dark, with the trees casting deep enough shadows to hide figments of imagination inside them. At first he mistook this place for his universe — but found himself unable to relax nonetheless.

His protective layer of liquid hatred was gone, and no matter how much he tried to summon it, it didn’t respond, leaving his white bones uncovered. It worried him. His most recent memories only exacerbated this worry.

Nightmare didn’t see who attacked him, so he had no idea whom to blame for this unexpected journey. But there was one thing he knew: nothing good was going to come out of this.

He tried to open a portal — and nothing happened! — as if his magic ceased to exist.

Shadows all seemed to point towards him. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. A pine tree creaked. A branch snapped under someone’s foot.

“Is anyone there?” The lord of nightmares felt a fear he’d long forgotten: his own fear — one he couldn’t drink or otherwise make use of.

He wasn’t even happy that there was no one around to see him tremble under the shadow of the unknown. He would’ve preferred that someone _did_ see him, if that meant he wasn’t going to be alone. He was reminded of the days, when his brother’s statue was the only company he had back in the deserted DreamTale. However, back then he was sure that there was no one capable of hurting him left. Here, though, he had no way of being sure.

Defenseless, scared and unable to leave the eerie forest, he headed in a random direction.

Shadows haunted him. Their ends got lost in the deep darkness of the forest as they seemed to move about, even though there was no wind in the air. They whispered among themselves, like ghosts of days long past, looking down on their visitor with looks as scornful as that of prosecution in a courtroom.

Every step was an effort. Tension hummed inside him like a taut string. He hugged himself, shaking, as his eyes looked for the mysterious threat hidden behind the trees. Nightmare kept listening to the shadows’ whispers but couldn’t make out a single word.

“Who’s there?! I can hear you!”

He kept walking through a terrifying haze of fear, as if he was stuck in a nightmare.

“That’s it! It’s just a bad dream! Why haven’t I thought of it before? I just need to wake up!”

He pinched himself, but the mysterious whispers didn’t leave. He slapped himself in the face, but the frightening shadows only grew darker. He screamed out of helplessness, but the forest only sunk deeper into darkness, ready to trap the terrified skeleton in its night embrace.

The night was slowly claiming the last of the light, and soon Nightmare found himself in complete darkness.

“Hey! Someone! Anyone!”

A branch snapped somewhere in front of him.

“Hey?! Is someone there?”

There actually was someone there. Nightmare, who’d been yearning to find someone before, belatedly realized that he might not enjoy the company of whoever he found. What if he was trapped inside some sort of a vampire tale, and he was about to be sucked dry of blood, like a juice box? He was completely defenseless without his black liquid armor and his magic after all.

Nightmare kept backing away until he ran into a tree. He kept his eyes glued to the light that kept flickering between the trees in front of him. A figure dressed in black was slowly approaching him.

“Reaper? Is that you?”

The figure didn’t respond. It kept coming closer, until only a few steps remained between them. The long black cloak it was dressed in reached the ground, its head was hidden under a hood, and it held a candle in its hands. The figure reeked of something alien and wrong — and that was even more frightening than the dark and mysterious surroundings.

“Hello, Nightmare.”

The voice seemed familiar, but he was only able to put a face to it once the figure pushed back its hood.

“Ink? Weren’t you all mangled?”

“Yes. And I died,” the guardian replied calmly, chasing away the darkness with the tiny light of the candle.

“Died?” Nightmare echoed, confused. He had no idea what happened to Ink, since he didn’t ask Error what he did to the artist. He hadn’t really seen Error much since that memorable victory.

“Yes, Nightmare, I died.”

“So you’re, like, a ghost?” Nightmare kept pressing himself back into the tree, not about to celebrate. Ghosts were capable of hurting people too, right?

“Yes, just like you.”

“I’m sorry, what? I’m not a ghost!”

The guardian tilted their head and shook it sadly.

“It must be upsetting to die so suddenly, after you've finally gotten rid of all the guardians. The Multiverse was almost under your control. But you grew soft and forgot to always watch your back. You got hit in the head.”

Nightmare instinctively reached up to feel his injured head and found a crack. It didn’t seem serious, but… but…

“I can’t die!”

“Since when are you immortal?” the guardian asked, surprised.

Nightmare wracked his head, trying to think of something to refute this nonsense. Instead he kept coming up with things that proved it: He was stuck in an unfamiliar place with no idea of how he got there. He felt pain right before he lost consciousness, and he saw a terrifying creature bore into his soul. He couldn’t use magic or teleport, and he lost his protective layer of negativity.

“But I still have my soul!” Nightmare summoned his soul and presented it as proof.

“Yes, that’s where the problem lies. Do you know where you are?”

Nightmare was still cradling the black apple in his hands as he tentatively answered:

“In a forest. In one of the universes.”

“You’re in purgatory.”

The lord of nightmares was petrified. He couldn’t quite believe it at first, but all the evidence was pointing towards his life ending and him finding himself not even in Reaper’s abode but in a place _before_ it. He got lost. And if he were to believe some religious books, he was doomed to wander around, alone and scared, till the end of time.

“So what do I do?” he asked, his voice filled with terror.

The guardian pretended to think deeply about it.

“You have two options. And I want to offer you a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?”

“We get out of here together. As you can probably guess, I don’t want to stay here either. So I made a deal with a powerful creature. He’s the devil, I guess? Well, since he was upset that I don’t have a soul that he demanded from me…” The guardian couldn’t hold back a smile. Nightmare was probably going to leave an indent in the shape of his back in the tree truck with how hard he pressed himself against it. He hurried to hide his soul back inside his body.

“So you’re telling me you promised him _my_ soul instead?!” he cried, and it sounded as much like a statement as it did a question.

“No. I promised him Dream’s soul,” the guardian replied calmly.

“But I don’t have his soul on me!” Nightmare panicked. He could already imagine Ink tweak the plan to switch the golden apple for the black one.

“I know.” The guardian nodded. “So this is what we’re going to do…”

Nightmare didn’t like this plan. It required him to walk to some kind of a well, then drown himself in it. It really didn’t sound like a great plan. Ink said they were going to drown themselves in there together — but who knew what kind of suicidal thoughts could be going through that inky head?

The guardian didn’t wait for him to decide: they turned around and started walking. The last source of light — the candle — left with them.

“Wait for me!”

Nightmare didn’t see the soulless skeleton grin, couldn’t read their thoughts: _I know how much of a coward you really are, when you don’t have negativity at your disposal, Night._ Nightmare resigned himself to following his guide, not even questioning his own and Ink’s status of ghosts.

“Once we’re back in our bodies, you’ll have to bring me Dream’s soul as quickly as possible. I’ll be waiting for you in DreamTale, by the Tree. Should you be late, he’ll come for our souls. Well, just for yours. That’s actually why I can’t leave through the well on my own: I don’t have a soul.”

“And you’re just going to give Dream’s soul to that creature?”

“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Don’t _you_? He’s your friend!”

“Well, he’s dead. He doesn’t care anymore.”

“I’m dead too! And I care!” The lord of nightmares snapped all of a sudden.

The guardian fixed him with a stare devoid of emotions and said: “You tortured and killed him. So what does it matter now? Don’t be a hypocrite, Nightmare, or I’ll leave and find someone else to come back to life with.”

Nightmare fell silent, staring at his feet. Now, without the former hatred, he was able to look at his brother’s death from a different angle, and he found himself overcome not with the joy of victory but with the grief of a loss. However, he still wanted to live. Again.

“And why isn’t Dream here?”

The guardian was quick to come up with an answer: “Because you still have his soul. It hasn’t been destroyed.” They picked up the pace, eager to get to the well before Nightmare’s injured head had the chance to generate any more smart questions.

From a distance the well looked like a one-armed monster leaning over a hole in the ground. At a closer look, the arm turned out to be a well sweep, and the rim of the well itself formed the hole. The candle wasn’t strong enough to dispel the darkness of the well’s maw, but there seemed to be water glinting somewhere down below.

Nightmare was about to step back and collect himself before taking the leap, but the guardian had other ideas. They grabbed him by the hand and pulled him into the darkness of the well’s hungry mouth. The candle went out. His body ended up free-falling for a short while, then he collided with the water — and everything went dark.

The guardian huffed and puffed as they dragged Nightmare into DreamTale. Water cascaded off both of them — joined by blood in the case of Nightmare’s twice-injured head.

Finally, they reached the stump of the Tree, and the guardian dropped Nightmare’s body right on top of it. They took a moment to catch their breath and settled down to wait for the victim of their prank to regain consciousness. In the meantime they switched the guide’s outfit for Ink’s clothes.

They didn’t have to wait for too long. A little drowned but alive, Nightmare woke up, and the liquid hatred instantly covered his whole body. However, he was still spooked, and once he made sure he wasn’t in the forest anymore but by the remains of the Tree in DreamTale, he nearly cried the tears of joy.

The guardian put a damper on that celebration though: “We don’t have much time! Unless I take the soul to that creature, he’ll come to collect it himself — and there’s no guarantee he’d stop at one.”

Nightmare was gone in a flash. He was back within five minutes — then gone again.

“I missed my calling as an actress,” the guardian said to themself, irony tinging their voice. And added: “In a failure of a theater, no less.”

Dream’s resurrection went as expected. His soul was intact — and that’s all that mattered. The rest was easy: a little code here, a little matter there — Dollmaker’s lessons weren’t wasted on them, it seemed — and a new body for the guardian of positivity was ready.

Aware that Nightmare would soon realize just how much he was duped, the guardian barred DreamTale and UnderSwap from any entry. Years of meeting all sorts of Errors taught them how to do it right.

And so, the guardian returned back to the Void, carrying Dream in their arms. They felt like a singer and a porter all at once: first they organized an entire spectacle, then carried the guests home safely. Awesome!

Dream was still unconscious, and the guardian didn’t hurry to wake him. They went to see Ink instead.

“I resurrected Dream,” they said, as if it wasn’t anything special — _eh, not a big deal_.

Ink didn’t believe them at first: “How?”

The new guardian told him the full story — preceding it with giving Ink a dose of yellow paint for effect. Ink hadn’t had such a good laugh in a long time.

“You’re a really creative person, I see.”

“Yeah, kinda,” the new guardian admitted. And said something strange: “All of us Inks are creative types.”

The new guardian examined the artist’s wounds and changed the dressings on some of them. When the world destruction ceased, all of Ink’s wounds and broken bones finally started to heal. But he was still not strong enough to survive the effects of the healing paints.

“Your eyes will remain shut forever, buf your body is strong. You’ll be able to stand one day. It’s just essential that you build up your magic reserve.”

“Is there any point in doing that?”

“You’ll have to find your own reasons for doing that. It’s painful, I know, but it’s worth it.”

“You sound like you know that from experience.”

“Heh.” The chuckle sounded sad. “I’m afraid I do.” Their gentle hands finished replacing the old bandages. “Loss is a part of my life. Of many Inks’ lives. Alone, doomed to lose our souls and become a mere tool with a replacement for feelings — it’s hard for us both to understand the concept of happiness and to find it. But I believe that we will be happy someday.

“Now rest up. You’ll be talking to Dream later today — and I’m afraid, it won’t be easy.”

But _they_ were going to talk to Dream first.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: references to sexism.
> 
> Special thanks to [Neutralcybertrn](https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn) for beta-reading this chapter!

The new guardian downed a cocktail of emotions and waited.

Dream woke up a couple of hours later. He struggled to grasp why he was alive and where he was. He was overjoyed once he recognized the ceiling above him, and was quick to sit up, looking around for his friends. He found one of them. Ink was sitting on a chair next to the couch Dream had been lying on. The artist fixed him with a strange, tense look. This didn’t deter Dream, and neither did the odd heap of emotions coming off the guardian. After all, Ink was known to drink wrong paints before, which left his behavior unpredictable.

Dream got to his feet and hurried to hug the other.

Ink didn’t return the embrace — only sighed and asked:

“Sit down, Dream. We need to talk.”

Such a serious tone made the guardian of positivity step back and sit down on the couch. He stared at Ink in confusion, and it took him a moment to realize there was something off about his friend’s image. The voice was different, for example: it sounded… smaller, somehow. And why was Ink hiding a part of his face behind his scarf?

He got the answer to that question a moment later. The guardian moved the scarf out of the way, and Dream was stunned when he realized he didn’t recognize his friend’s face. Ink used to have a strong jaw, but now it looked sort of narrow.

“Ink?”

“Yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m Ink, but I don’t come from your Multiverse. Let’s put it this way: I’m a self-invited guest, who’s trying to help. Do you want the details?”

“Of course!” Dream cried fervently, still examining the alien Ink’s looks.

“Okay. I’ll start with the most important part. My Multiverse perished, but I survived—”

Dream instantly interrupted their story to demand more details:

“How did it happen?”

“In short, the balance of my Multiverse had never been stable, and one day it broke down for good. There were too many people responsible to list them all — but I was one of them. My family,” the guardian shuddered and looked away. “They died. I couldn’t do anything about it. My friends, my enemies — all of them died. And despite the heavy weight of guilt on my chest, I ended up in Zero Infinity.”

“I’m so sorry about your loss,” Dream said slowly and asked: “But what’s Zero Infinity?”

“Oh!” The new guardian was glad for the distraction. “It’s the space between Multiverses. I don’t know who named it that or what it means. I would’ve given it a much simpler name: Hell.” A fire symbol and a crosshair shone inside their eyes. “It’s a horrible place full of all sorts of shit. In essence, it’s a vivarium, where every resident sooner or later becomes a test subject in an experiment called ‘find yourself a life goal’.

“I refused to play this game. I couldn’t just accept the rules of Zero Infinity, so I near-immediately started searching for a new Multiverse for me to settle in — and try again. So I came to this cluster of tree-type worlds. For the longest time I only watched the Multiverses like one of the frozen ones, learning their rules and searching for a branch that would accept me.

“Then I saw some terrible events unfold in one of the time streams. Before that branch could split into many different endings, I came to Ink — and he passed his position, his responsibilities, his pain over to me. _I’m_ the guardian of your Multiverse now, Dream.”

Dream was shocked into stillness. Fear and anger arose inside him: fear, for he was scared to find out his friends had died; and anger, for he blamed himself for not being able to keep them safe from his brother.

“Blue died.” Strike to his soul number one. “You died too.” Strike number two. Dream wasn’t sure he would be able to bear a third one. “I was able to resurrect you. And Ink was badly mangled, and so far it’s unclear how much of the damage can be healed.”

“He’s alive!” Dream was filled with joy that overshadowed all the other emotions. “Ink’s alive?!”

Instead of answering, the new guardian looked towards the second floor. Dream followed her line of sight and jumped to his feet, rushing off — or, well, he tried to: a firm grip on his arm stopped him.

“Let me go!”

“Wait. You need to be prepared for what you’re going to see there.”

Dream twitched yet conceded. He sat back down and fixed the guardian’s replacement with a resentful look.

They sighed: “He’s completely blind, and it’s unlikely that his sight will ever be back. Nightmare damaged the core magic of his skull. All of his bones are broken. In fact, they are only held together by Error’s strings and bandages.”

The more Dream heard, the more haunted his expression grew. Still, he noticed an odd detail:

“Strings?”

“Right after Nightmare was done torturing Ink, Error took him in — and tried to take care of him, I think. Either way, one day he brought him to this house and left him here. That’s when Ink said he was standing down from the guardian’s position, and I came and took over. I also put up defenses against Error around the house. Did the same thing to your world and Blue’s.”

Dream took a minute to digest what he’d heard, then headed to the second floor once more. This time this gait was a lot less confident and joyful. This time the guardian didn’t stop him.

What Dream saw in that room shocked him, made him rush behind the door and stand there, collecting himself. Ink looked _terrible_. Strings and bandages really were the only thing holding his bones together.

Finally, Dream calmed down enough to be able to enter the room again. He slowly walked up to the bed and threw a thin blanket over his friend.

“Do I really look that bad?” Ink asked, his voice void of emotions. Dream remained unperturbed by the reaction, since he was used to his friend’s volatile emotions. He could even imagine his friend chuckling.

“You sound terrible too.”

“Stars, I’m so glad to hear you!” Ink would’ve cried if he could. “It hurt so much to see you two die. I thought I’d never get to see… get to hear you again.”

Dream touched his friend’s eye-sockets, running his fingertips over the horrifying cracks there: “You might see me yet.”

“I doubt it.” Ink managed a dry smile and sighed. “What’s important is that you’re alive. Now I can rest easily, knowing our Multiverse has two guardians.”

Dream stroked his friend on the head, too scared to take his hand: the fingers looked as if someone took a hammer or a vice to them.

“You’ll be helping them, right? The new guardian?”

“I will,” Dream promised. “And I’ll be helping you too.”

“Thank you. Dream?”

“Hm?”

“Give me a dream. I’ve only been having nightmares for the past few months.”

When Dream descended back into the living room, the new guardian was busy making tea while humming an unfamiliar but beautiful wordless melody. To Dream’s pity-stricken senses it sounded like a requiem. He sat at the table, and a steaming mug was instantly settled in front of him.

“In Zero Infinity, just like in my home Void, there was no use for food. And no food either. I think I've finally lost the last of my taste buds, so I can’t guarantee a pleasant tea-drinking.”

And Dream couldn’t guarantee a pleasant conversation. He was bursting with negative emotions. Right now, he swore he could relate to his hatred-stricken brother.

“I want to ask,” he started. “Why didn’t you help us back when Nightmare was killing us? Were you just waiting for an opportunity to take Ink’s place?”

“That too,” the new guardian admitted and sat down across from the guardian of positivity. “Just like it happens with you guardians and the universes, residents of Zero Infinity don’t interfere with the matters of Multiverses unless something exceptional happens. In your case, it was Ink’s desire to resign from his role as a guardian. And yes, I was waiting for something like that to happen.”

“Did you enjoy the show?” Dream asked venomously.

“No. I can’t _enjoy_. I don’t have a soul. But I’m sorry about your tragedy. And, since you’ve asked why I didn’t help you earlier… The thing is, even if I interfered during that fight, it wouldn’t have changed this branch of reality. It simply wouldn’t have existed. But there would’ve been another one — maybe it even exists — one where Ink is lying in his bed alone, bleeding anew every time Error destroys a world, and you’re not resurrected because your soul’s still in your brother’s clutches.” The new guardian took a sip of tea. “I don’t think you would’ve wanted that to happen. Though, to be fair, you would’ve been dead and wouldn’t have been able to want anything at that point.”

Dream had nothing to counter the complex assessment of how Multiversal structure worked. He was left to drink tea as he attempted to calm down.

“Will we work together?” he asked.

“If you want,” he heard.

“I don’t, but I will.” Dream didn’t bother pretending he accepted his friend’s replacement. “What’s your name? I can’t call you ‘Ink’.”

“I understand. I didn’t adopt another name in Zero Infinity, but back in my home Multiverse they often called me Inky.” Embarrassed by this confession, the new guardian hurried to hide their face in their scarf.

“Inky?” Dream echoed. The name sounded unexpectedly saccharine to his ears. “Why Inky?”

“Because my friends were frustrated by the whole gender mix-up. I always referred to myself as a guy and dressed in men’s clothes so that certain despicable people wouldn’t get any ideas about me. But whenever we weren’t busy protecting the worlds, they preferred to call me ‘Inky’ and asked me to wear something more fitting for my sex.” The longer they spoke, the more their head sunk behind the scarf, and by the end of the speech only the top of their head remained unhidden by the fabric.

Dream slowly processed the confession, then slapped himself in the face at the realization. He remembered the way he’d been talking and acting, and found himself mortified by his own behavior.

“I’m sorry! Stars! I’m such an idiot! I rarely meet women of our kind, so I didn’t even realize… I acted so rude. Shame on me. Okay, I’ll call you Inky then.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Inky pulled the scarf away to reveal traces of embarrassment still present on her face. “I’m the guardian first and foremost. And the subject of my sex is a perennial problem.”

That’s when Dream realized something else. She’d mentioned losing her family — which meant she used to have kids — and the only thing he said to her was a dry “sorry”. This once again drove him to silently berate himself.

“I’ll try to be more considerate,” he said.

“Don’t.” Inky shook her head. “I’ll feel a lot more comfortable if you’re completely honest with me. And most importantly, you’d better watch yourself when it comes to my gender. Otherwise I'll have to knock some sense into you the way I did into my friends back in my Multiverse. They quickly realized I wasn’t some sort of damsel in distress. Trust me, I’m creative and have a lot of experience. Your brother had already learned it first-hand.”

The smile of the soulless creature had Dream pressing sinking back into the chair. He was inclined to believe her. Girl or not, she was a soulless and dangerous creature, who’d been through enough in her lifetime for him to doubt her strength and experience.

“Is Ink asleep?” she asked.

“Yes. I granted him good dreams. And he didn’t look like he had any desire to wake up.” Dream clenched his jaw and stared down at the table. His friend’s fate was weighing down heavily on him.

All of a sudden, Dream twitched, having realized he’d completely forgotten about Blue’s fate. He remembered Inky saying that he died, so he fixed her with the frightening stare of a monster with a guillotine blade hanging over his head.

“Blue!”

In his mind’s eye he saw Blue. The younger skeleton was always beaming with positivity and choosing to believe the best about everything. He loved cooking tacos and always fought for what was good and right, no matter how hard and dangerous it was.

He wasn’t there anymore. The guillotine blade dropped down, and it felt as if it took a chunk of Dream’s soul as it landed.

But there was still a chance…

“If you managed to bring me back, then bringing him back won’t be a problem, right?” His voice was filled with hope.

“Sorry.” Inky shook her head. She downed the rest of her tea. “He was given a promise: UnderSwap won’t be reset. And Blue can’t be brought back without a reset. Besides, even a full reset won’t bring back the Blue you know. It would be a skeleton who’d never met you or Ink. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to let him rest in peace. The problems of the Multiverse are no longer a burden his fragile shoulders have to carry.”

The conversation was over. Inky got up from the table and walked up to a window. She stared at the destroyer, who was once again loitering next to the barrier.

Dream didn’t hurry to finish his tea — not that he tasted much of it. He was still trying to make sense of everything that had happened and come to terms with it. After all, from his point of view, it was only yesterday that Ink and Blue were alive and well, and he didn’t have massive trauma to deal with. And now… now nothing was going to be the same. Neither he, nor they.

“You mentioned your friends. Were they also… well… me and Blue?”

“Yes.” Inky turned away from the window to fix her dull eyelights on the guardian of dreams. “They meant a lot to me. It was hard for me to watch you die. And even though I knew you weren’t them, it didn’t make the pain of this loss any easier to bear.”

They both fell silent, unable to continue this conversation. Dream left to stay with Ink, and the new guardian continued to watch Error. The black skeleton stubbornly waited by the barrier, searching for a breach in it.

“I wonder what you want, Error...”

They only picked up the conversation a couple of hours later, once Dream came back from the second floor. He immediately asked about this brother’s fate. The full story of the spectacle Nightmare had found himself a part of, had Dream laughing for a while. It sounded as if all of the stress was slowly draining out of him. Though after he was done having a laugh, he was insistent about knowing the coordinates to the universe that turned his brother helpless.

“You know,” Inky began with a crooked smirk on her face, “I’ve seen a lot of Multiverses, where the collapse started exactly like this. Locking Nightmare up might sound good from the point of ethics, but it might become quite a shock to the balance of the Multiverse — and may the starsong be with you should that happen. The Multiverse might find a way worse way of restoring the balance than the existence of an oily octopus. And if it doesn’t, everything will probably go downhill from there, and I’ll end up losing a home once again — while the rest of you will lose your lives. Though, who knows? I might end up dead this time.”

It was scary how indifferent Inky was when talking about something so horrifying, but the realization that, like Ink, she simply lacked emotions, made Dream remind her:

“Drink the paints.”

“Which ones?” she ran her fingers over the vials, hesitant. “All of the emotions would be equally fitting — but I don’t want to be sad or happy or angry right now. If there’s something I learned while stuck in Zero Infinity, it’s the delicate truth that sometimes being emotional does more harm than being emotionless. Even if it’s cruel.”

“So what do you suggest we do now? Go on a patrol?” Dream suggested.

Inky shook her head.

“It’s best if we lay low for now. I only ever leave the Void to conk kick Error’s butt. He knew almost instantly that I wasn’t Ink — so now he keeps attacking universes to draw me out and ask about Ink’s fate.”

The destroyer’s apparent curiosity about Dream’s friend had the guardian of positivity stumped: Error was complicit to Ink’s mutilation, then tried to heal him, then abandoned him — and was now upset for some reason.

“Why does he care?”

“Here’s a shocker: In many Multiverses Ink and Error are a couple.”

Dream pretended not to understand: “A couple of what?”

“Lovers, spouses, close friends. Call it whatever you want. And don’t you give me that terrified look. Sometimes it’s the best way to balance their explosive duo.”

“And he… wants to…?” Dream barely managed to force out.

“Perhaps he does.” Inky shrugged, indifferent. “Perhaps he doesn’t. Like I’ve said, it happens often — and ‘often’ isn’t ‘always’ and not in any conditions imaginable.”

“Were you and your Error a thing as well?”

Inky responded with a sad smile: “I’d rather not tell who I started my family with. Sorry. I don’t want to embarrass anyone and give start to any weird thoughts and ideas.”

An air of mystery kept getting thicker around the skeleton girl with each fact revealed. And she still _felt_ alien. It felt as if she’d brought a shard of the eerie place she called Zero Infinity with her, and now she was carrying it with her in place of a soul.

“I know that I feel different to you. As if I shouldn’t be here. That’s normal.” It might’ve seemed as if she was trying to change the subject, but in reality she simply noticed the confused and fearful look on Dream’s face. “It always happens with guests.”

“You mean the people who come from Zero Infinity?”

“Yep. We’re perceived as an alien element, and the Multiverse usually expels us on its own. However, it can also accept us — under certain conditions. For example, I am able to stay because Ink handed his responsibilities of the guardian over to me. In theory, my aura will gradually change, and I’ll become indistinguishable from the residents of the Void. That would mean that I’ve found a new home.”

Dream couldn’t hold back a shiver. He was still plagued by the thought that there was some conspiracy in place to replace Ink with this girl — all while Ink was still alive, even if he couldn’t lift a single finger.

“He’ll regain some of his strength soon,” Inky seemed to read his mind, “and then I’ll be able to use healing magic on him. I hope we’ll be able to restore his body.”

Dream clenched his teeth and sighed heavily. He struggled to stay in the same room with Ink without suffocating in the pity he felt for his friend. He was forcing himself to think positively, but time after time he found himself doubting that it was possible to fix all of these injuries without any lasting consequences — wondrous healing paint or not. And if it wasn’t, then his friend would end up dealing with disabilities, would become dependent on others for everything. He’d require help at all times — and then he’d think of himself as a burden.

“I understand what you’re thinking…”

“Are you reading my mind?”

“No. Like I’ve said, I _understand_ what you’re thinking. I’m worried about Ink’s future as well — and about his attitude towards said future. It’ll take a lot of effort to make him want to live. But we can work on that later.

“For now, Dream, let’s consider the fate of the Multiverse. Or rather, let’s come up with ways to make this fate neither lethal, nor nightmarish — but stable. And yes, ideas on ways to rein your brother in are a priority.”

They talked for a long while, coming up with their own ideas and discussing options that Inky saw their colleagues from other Multiverses employ. Basically, they were doing their best not to think about the upcoming healing session and its results. But Inky did put the healing paints in the center of the table, making it clear that there was no escaping fate.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: some sexist and ableist language.
> 
> Special thanks to [Neutralcybertrn](https://twitter.com/Neutralcybertrn) for beta-reading this chapter!

A few days later she picked up the paints and fixed Dream with a meaningful look, silently asking him: _Gonna join me?_

Dream would’ve loved to scream, _No!_ — but instead he said: “Yes.” Otherwise what kind of a friend would he be? He wasn’t much help in general, so the least he could do was alleviate some of his friend’s pain by granting him positive emotions and good dreams.

Ink heard them enter the room, and he knew exactly why they were here. So he grew tense, aware that his fate would be decided soon.

“Sleep my friend. Soon everything will be okay,” he heard Dream say before he fell asleep, pleasant dreams filling his mind.

He didn’t feel some of his bones get restored while others were torn off to be redrawn from scratch. He didn’t see his bones turn to dust time after time, resisting restoration. But he could tell a lot of time and effort went into healing him.

A sudden awakening had Ink witnessing this conversation:

“Error is still sitting by the barrier.” That was Dream’s voice.

“Odd. Usually four hours is his limit,” came a lifeless but more melodious voice. “He must’ve felt us cut the strings off Ink’s bones. I guess he’s waiting for the results.”

“Should we talk to him?”

“ _We_ should not, and Ink’s in no condition yet to—”

“What kind of a condition am I in?” Ink chimed in.

They were instantly by his side, leaning over him, but Ink couldn’t see that happen. No matter how sad that made him, he was forced to accept the fact: they weren’t able to give him his sight back.

“Not a bad one,” Dream said, trying to cheer him up. “We restored almost all of your bones without an issue, but your eyesight… Sorry.”

Inky was a lot more harsh with her conclusions: “In addition to your sight, we had an issue with restoring a few of your vertebrae. We managed it, but I’m afraid you’ll never be as flexible as you used to be. And your leg was extremely mangled, so now you’ll have to use a cane to walk around. Also, we weren’t able to restore a few of your ribs.”

Ink sighed heavily. He would’ve gladly traded a few serious wounds for the ability to see. A blind artist? What a joke!

Slowly, as if scared he’d fall apart, he started to sit up. The pain in his back had him hissing, and Dream reached out to help him. Ink recognized his friend’s confident grip and couldn’t stop from clinging onto the other’s hands with his own shaking ones. It took quite a bit of effort, but the former guardian managed to sit up. He didn’t bother turning his head towards Dream — only smiled and said:

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing…”

“It’s not nothing. After all, I’m useless now.”

“But you’re still my friend.”

Inky refrained from interfering, staring at the two old friends with an empty look in her eyes. Once she was sure that her charge wasn’t about to fall apart, she headed downstairs. There she once again looked out the window and saw Error standing by the barrier. After a moment’s consideration, she walked out of the house. She kept her pace slow, as if hoping to reconsider, stop herself from coming to hasty conclusions and making decisions that were just as hasty.

Soon only a single step separated her from Error, but the thin membrane of the barrier kept the glitch from seeing her: seeing how she examined him, how she parsed his emotions, trying to understand them. But he did hear her say:

“Ink survived the reconstruction of his bones.”

Error shuddered, tried to find the person speaking with his eyes as he asked:

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I felt like you needed to know this.”

He didn’t hear anything else: Inky headed back inside the house.

When she returned, the friends’ conversation was well on its way to turn into a comedic dialogue.

“By the way, the person who replaced me… They’re a Sans, right?” Ink asked Dream. “Of course, they’re a Sans. We all look similar, so it’s easy to confuse us for each other if we switch clothes. But how did they manage to become an actual guardian? I don’t get it.”

“Well… how do I put it?” Dream hesitated. “Why didn’t you ask them?”

“I wasn’t in a good condition, and I honestly didn’t give a damn who they were as long as the worlds got a new guardian to look over them. I didn’t really care about the specifics at that moment.”

“You’ll be surprised, but the person you handed your duties over to isn’t just a Sans. They’re an Ink. An Ink from a different Multiverse.”

Silence fell upon them for a minute. Inky actually thought that, perhaps, they started whispering, and that’s why she couldn’t hear them through the door — but nope! Ink was just too shocked by the revelation and struggled for a while to wrap his mind around it:

“Wow. I didn’t expect that. Does he look just like me? And does he have the same powers?”

“Well, almost,” Dream said, embarrassed, and avoided mentioning that he hadn’t seen the full power of the new guardian yet. “There _are_ a couple of differences…”

“What kind of differences? And why do you sound so weird talking about it?”

“They’re a woman.”

There was another minute of silence as Ink processed the news.

“Me? You mean, the me from another Multiverse is a woman? Dream, are you sure? I mean, have you checked in the right places?”

Inky drank from the yellow vial and found herself barely holding back laughter. She could easily imagine just how bright Dream’s blush was right then as he choked on air at the _sheer audacity_ of Ink’s accusations:

“Ink! What the hell are you thinking?!” He was quick to let it go though. Ink was clearly having fun with this conversation — so why would he deprive his friend of his moments of joy, even if _this_ is the form they took. “Anyway, I call her Inky to avoid confusion. And she really _is_ a female version of you.”

“I wish I could see her. I would’ve loved to see what I would look like as a woman.”

Inky couldn’t stand it anymore and walked into the room.

“You look fine. Like a dressed-up skeleton.”

“A style icon?” Ink turned his head in the direction her voice was coming from.

“Skele-style,” he heard in response. “How do you feel?”

“Surprisingly good. My bones barely even hurt.”

“Good.” Inky nodded and addressed Dream. “Do you have a doctor or a scientist you know and fully trust so that they can handle Ink’s rehabilitation?”

She got silence in response.

Ink had to handle his rehabilitation on his own — and most of the time, alone, since Inky and Dream had to work on dealing with the universes and their pests.

The loneliness, the lack of a goal in life, his broken body and his blindness didn’t make Ink’s residence among the living pleasant.

It’s possible to get used to darkness. That was something Ink learned once he came to terms with never being able to see anything but darkness ever again. The emptiness inside him was way harder to deal with — but Ink was wary of filling it. He still didn’t feel resigned enough that he wouldn’t try doing something stupid.

His legs couldn’t support him well enough on their own, so he had to use a walker to get around the house. What was the point of walking around though? He could collect dust perfectly well even while staying in his room.

At first Ink kept trying to get used to living without sight, but every time his fingers brushed against paints or paintbrushes, he was reminded of just what he’d lost. He’d never be able to draw or help create the worlds again. The thought had his non-existent soul shrinking.

Resigned or not, he still had no idea what to do with the rest of his life? Who would even need it?

Reality was slowly growing less and less important, and the dreams he got from his friend were the only thing that granted him some peace. He also enjoyed listening to his friends’ news, though his relationship with Inky remained somewhat distant. She made no attempts to get closer to him than she already was, and seemed happy to have shoved some of the care he needed on Dream. Though she never denied him a conversation.

“My family didn’t always find it easy to handle my soullessness,” she said, when Ink asked about her past. “My husband knew that I wasn’t capable of loving him as much as he loved me. My kids were often upset with me. They kept saying that I wasn’t like the moms other kids had. But they’d always forgive my shortcomings… I miss them.”

Ink felt the sharp pain of loss even through the barrier of his own soullessness. It didn’t happen to him. It wasn’t his family she was talking about. Those weren’t his kids. But all of them were gone. His alternate had lost everything and everyone — but was able to live with this pain… And here he was complaining, even though he’d only lost his sight!

“I wish I could empathize with you and pity you,” he said. “I hope you’ll be able to start a new family in this Multiverse.”

Inky shook her head: “I don’t think so. I don’t want to go through the same pain and helplessness again,” she said quietly, as if choked up, and turned the conversation on him: “And you? Would you like to have a family?”

Ink didn’t know the answer to this question. He’d never considered this. Work had been taking up all of his time and energy before, and now…

“Who would want someone blind and mutilated like me?” he voiced his thoughts bitterly.

Inky let out a heavy sight and confessed: “You know, I think I’ve stolen your happy ending.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Error keeps asking about your fate. He’s ready to negotiate just to have the chance to see you again.”

“He’s stupid.”

“No, he’s insane. Though that’s on par with other Errors. It’s sort of sad he’s only now starting to realize what he missed. Either way, it’s your call. If you want, I can set up a meeting for you two.”

Ink shifted in place, unsure.

“Why would he want me? I mean, he stopped Nightmare from finishing me off, then he either tortured me or tried to heal me — hell if I know which one it really was — and now he wants to talk to me, even though he never wanted to hear anything about being my friend before.”

“People change,” was Inky’s vague answer.

“But not Error.”

“That’s something you can only find out once you two meet. Perhaps, he’ll only say a word or two to you and leave.”

“And what if he doesn’t stop at a word or two?”

“Then you two will finally talk not as a guardian and a destroyer, but as two skeletons of the Void!”

A quiet, slow melody travelled over the battlefield, the sound of it mourning the dead and healing the hearts of the living.

Error lost. He wasn’t able to destroy this world, got beaten up — and now his enemy was standing over him and singing.

It took a bit of effort, but the destroyer managed to stand up. He was about to either keep on fighting until his poor body sustained critical damage or head home, when he heard:

“Are you ready to meet Ink?”

A shudder ran over Error’s body, followed by a wave of error messages and glitches. He failed to remain calm, the first wave was then followed by another one, and Error found himself drowning in a vicious circle of reboots.

“Ye… ee… e,” came from the cloud of glitches the destroyer had turned into.

Inky examined the shocked skeleton skeptically, fully aware that he was definitely _not_ ready, but she chose not to interfere. She wasn’t a proper resident of this Multiverse yet, after all. She was still a guest, albeit a welcome one.

When the amount of glitches surrounding Error lessened, she opened a portal to the Void:

“Let’s go then. He’s expecting you.”

Ink wasn’t. He absolutely didn’t expect a portal to block his path. The surprise had the mug of tea slipping out of his hands and falling to the floor. The mug shattered, and a dark puddle started to spread its tendrils towards his feet and the surrounding furniture.

He didn’t see it, but his sharpened sense of hearing drew him a picture of what was going on.

Error wasn’t ready for this meeting either. So he froze, looking Ink over in mild confusion.

Ink looked sickly. The horrifying injuries were gone, but some of his bones clearly weren’t healed quite right. He was leaning on a walker like an old man. His empty eye-sockets were staring past Error.

At first the empty eye-sockets could be taken for a sign of surprise, but when the eyelights failed to ignite, and instead Ink suddenly asked: “Inky, is that you? Who did you bring with you?” Error realized what that really meant. He was about to dive back into the portal, but it disappeared, cutting off his escape route. His enemy, whose fate he’d been so preoccupied with, was standing right before him, blind and mutilated.

“I have Error with me,” Inky said calmly and stepped aside to watch the show that was about to play out.

Ink gripped the walker so tightly his knuckles creaked. He frowned, which gave him a semblance of a storm cloud. His voice that sounded lifeless just a moment ago, was now tinged with tension and sadness:

“Hello, Error. I was told that you’ve been trying to see me. Why?”

Error didn’t know how to answer. Why, indeed?

There were many questions he didn’t have an answer to. Why did he interfere and didn’t let Ink be killed? Why did he try to heal him? Why was he worried about him? Why was he trying to see him? Why did he come?

“I… don’t know. I guess, for the same reasons you tried to be my friend.”

His honest answer made Ink frown. He silently shuffled into the kitchen, where he sat down on one of the chairs and gestured for Error to join him at the negotiation table.

“Well, let us talk, if there is something to talk about,” he said and waited.

But Error had no idea how to start this conversation. He looked at his enemy and asked the most obvious question ever:

“How are you?”

“Awful, can’t you see?”

Error fell silent, thinking about a different question to ask. But what could he ask? He knew that asking the former guardian about his health or life was useless: the answer wouldn’t be pleasant and would only take their conversation in a negative direction. So he decided to ask about the second Ink, who’d come out of nowhere:

“Why are there two of you now?”

“Because I can no longer be the guardian. Though a better question would be: Why am I still alive if there’s such a good replacement available?”

Error was shaking. He remembered his enemy as a ball of positivity, constantly under the effects of the yellow paint and surrounded by friends. It was hard to see him broken like this.

“I’m sorry, Ink. I’m really sorry. I didn’t want it to end up this—”

Ink cut him off: “Then what _did_ you want?”

Error stared at his former rival, overcome with a realization: he wasn’t sure what the answer was. His life’s goal was to destroy all the universes except for the original one — but this goal was forced on him, and it had never been his only reason for living. There were other things as well: the stars of OuterTale, the chocolate from UnderFell, fighting Ink…

Losing that last one came as a heavy blow. Sure, a new Ink soon replaced the original one, but… they just weren’t the same rainbow bastard, who kept talking about friendship and trying to win the fearsome destroyer over. However, that rainbow idiot wasn’t there anymore. He was broken, and someone glued together the shard to create this depressive creature in front of him. A creature that no longer had a reason or desire to live. A creature whose empty eye-sockets, filled with abyssal darkness, bore holes into its former enemy.

“So what did you want to tell me, Error?” Ink drummed his fingers against the table impatiently. He didn’t see the destroyer hide his face in his hands, struggling to hold back the wave of glitches that promised to send him into a long reboot. He didn’t see the pain and disappointment flash on the black skeleton’s face. But he did hear the other’s voice ooze with genuine pain:

“I came too late,” Error forced out. “I got held up destroying a world. And when I came, I saw two piles of dust and your broken bones. The only thing I could do is take you away and try to heal you…”

“Why?” Ink asked for the umpteenth time.

“I don’t know!” Error snapped, and a stream of confessions spilled out of him. His cries echoed off the walls. “I don’t know! I just didn’t want to see you die, that’s all!” Error forced himself to lower his voice. “You… you never finished the job. You… always believed we could be friends. You were always ready to give me a second — or a hundred and second — chance. You always believed in me.” He paused, then asked: “Why did you believe in me? No one has ever believed in me but you. Why?”

Ink didn’t know. It’s as if he’d forgotten why he’d ever wanted something like that — why he thought that Error could change.

And he turned out to be right, didn’t he? Otherwise he wouldn’t have been alive right now, and the black skeleton wouldn’t have been sitting here, in front of him, full of remorse.

It would’ve been great to become friends back when he was healthy: he could’ve shown Error so many worlds, he could’ve changed his worldview and proved how wrong the glitch’s cause was. But now, struggling with disability, he had no way of stopping Error from destroying anything. He was no longer the glitch’s equal in strength. But still…

“Well, I was right, wasn’t I?” A tiny smile bloomed on Ink’s face. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

The tension in the air eased up a little, and Inky smiled with the corners of her mouth as she walked out into the living room, still listening to the slow conversation between the former enemies. Once she was sure that they weren’t going to destroy the house or kill each other, she left the Void. She tracked down Dream, and together they went on a regular patrol.

In one of the worlds they came across Nightmare. The lord of negativity acted oddly: he escaped from the battlefield, nearly screaming in hysterics, as his companions watched in shock.

“Am I just imagining things, or did he try to use the sign of the cross against you?” Dream asked, surprised, once they chased the rest of the gang into their respective worlds.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but he _was_ making some really odd gestures there. Does he really still believe my prank was for real?”

“I guess so.” Dream chuckled. “And I like him way more when he’s scared like this.”

The skeletons wandered from world to world for a little longer, then returned to the Void. Error was still there. He met Dream’s entrance with badly concealed surprise at first, then simply turned away: if there were two Inks now, then seeing Dream alive wasn’t all that weird. He opened a portal and left without saying goodbye.

Ink waved at his friends, running his fingers over the vials with emotions as he considered his options. He couldn’t choose between joy, sadness and surprise.

“Did you two talk?” Inky asked him.

“Yes.” Ink drank joy and smiled. “And we’ll continue our conversation tomorrow. It turns out he has favorite universes, and he promised to ‘show’ them to me.”

“Is everything okay?”

Ink shrugged, but his warm smile made it clear that the former guardian felt better now.

Inky left Dream and Ink alone and walked into the kitchen to make some tea. She’d recently planted chamomiles — tiny white suns with bright centers — on the tiny patch of ground that could be seen through the kitchen window. It’s funny how Inky had no idea that these were the plants she’d been carrying seeds for in her pockets this whole time. She’d always had them with her. Perhaps, one of her kids had given them to her, or maybe they had found their way into her pockets all on their own. Who knew?

“A penny for your thoughts?” Dream sat down across from her.

Inky took a sip of the tea she’d made and smiled. Two bright shapes glowed inside her eyes: a star and a triangle. She pointed at the flowers:

“Look, they’ve taken root.”

Dream didn’t really understand how much and how little those chamomiles meant for the soulless skeleton, but looking at them made him sad. They felt like a bouquet left on top of a grave.

“You know,” he said, “I have yet to thank you for everything. For Ink, for my resurrection, for our Multiverse.”

Inky smiled sadly and shook her head:

“I don’t need gratitude. I need a home. And I think I’ve found it. I don’t need anything else.”

“Do you think everything will be alright?”

Inky shrugged: “We’ll do everything we can to achieve happiness. Ink will do his best. Error will do his best. You and I and every resident of this Multiverse — we will all do our best. And then, one day, everything will be alright.”

Inky felt as if she’d just heard the probabilities split. For a moment, she felt as if it wasn’t her own reflection she saw in the window, but a second version of herself — which meant that the Multiverse had accepted its new resident.

“Yes. Everything really is alright.”


End file.
